Special Collections

Gently, I ran my fingers down his spine, and held my breath. I read him like a book, and clearly, I had him in the palm of my hand. Ok, maybe I didn't literally have him in the palm of my hand, but I did literally read him like a book because, well, it was a book, and I was only allowed to touch and not hold. Today was the first day of my 'Idea of the Renaissance' class with one of my favorites, Andrew Hadfield, and the seminar is held in the Special Collections area of the University of Sussex library.  The three other MA students and I in this course will get to spend such intimate moments with these old texts from the Early Modern period for the next ten weeks, and while trying to contain my excitement and suppress my giddy grin, I asked an archivist if I could take a picture of the books from today's lesson (without a flash, of course!). "You're one of us, aren't you?" was her way of granting me permission.

Below are the three 15th century books I caressed today (yes, I learned how to handle the collections). The first contains stories of the lives of saints (and the oldest of our collection here at Sussex), as was a popular medieval topic, while the second was a monk's attempt to tell the history of the world. Finally the last is an impressively annotated copy of Virgil that would but both the Arden and Riverside Shakespeares to shame.